i don’t know what planet that is next to the moon right now, but it’s got rings*, and moons!

🙂

(*maybe, maybe not, my telescope is cheap, it doesn’t focus very well, and it’s all a bit wobbly)

Jupiter

http://www.spaceweather.com/

ok, it might be a fuzzy looking death star, with a few smaller fuzzy baby death stars all lined up next to it…

(thanks Druidh!)

Yip it’s definitely jupiter. If you look roughly 10 degrees east of it and 2 or 3 degrees lower you’ll see uranus also.

Cool!

I can recommend checking out slacker astronomy if you’re into space but not all that schooled in it, neat podcasts and stuff about near space, and tricky stuff explained in neat ways!

Also, if you have a smart phone, there are great apps that tell you whats in the bit of sky you’re looking at… Amazing!

Yes to the moons, lots of them, but Jupiter’s rings are very, very faint. All the gas giants have rings, but Saturn’s are the only properly visible ones. You can see five of Jupiter’s moons with binoculars.

5 of Jupiters moons? I have never seen more than the 4 Galilean moons.

Its fantastic when you see this stuff for the first time with your own eyes

its jupiter my xmas present is outside cooling down im off out now!!!!!!!
i saw 4 of the the moons on my first attempt the other night

edit of you have android phone goggle sskys very useful for us
beginers!

Just been out there and had a look through my scope. Got a nice view before the clouds appeared….

Google Sky Map is a fantastic little app…

Aye, Jupiter is cool…

…first clear evening here for a while (yes I live in Manchester…)

Venus low in the south as it got dark, plus the ISS and a very bright Iridium flare.

Nice to find a few more astrogeeks on here 😉

I don’t know if it was just me but Sirius looked brighter than I’d ever seen it t’other night.

I’ve seen sommatorothers off the shoulder of orion – anyone else ?

Stellarium (pc, mac, android, iPhone) is worth a look too.

What you really want to do if your telescope can do object tracking is plug a webcam into where the eyepiece goes on your telescope, take about 200-300 frames of, say, saturn or jupiter and then use something like Registax to compile the images together….telescope power is more about light gathering than magnification and this basically means that you get seriously good detailed amateur astronomy pics 🙂